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Monday, June 13, 2011

Banner Quilt for Eli - Finished!

I've been itching to make a quilt for Eli but life has been so busy lately (our house is now in contract - yay!) ... you know how it goes...I decided to make time to put a fun Banner Quilt together and 4 days later, I had it almost done!I was inspired by Rylee's Quilt, although it's a smaller girl version.

Technically, this is a wholecloth quilt which means each side is one whole piece of fabric, no blocks to be sewn together, which is why I went for it! Here are some other examples of (proper) wholecloth quilts on Flickr. Wholecloth quilts can be quilted VERY intricately, but I didn't go that direction, since this is only a play quilt for little man.The front is a flat sheet from Ikea, the backing is half of a duvet cover also from Ikea... both already in my stash! I didn't spend a single dime on new fabric for this quilt, woohoo!

I did some loopy quilting on the mid-arm machine at my LQS, and to my surprise, I had it quilted in a little more than an hour! Yay! Its different from my normal (aka boring) stippling... gives it a bit of movement, and makes for a nice soft quilt!

I cut out the banners (or flags or bunting) from scraps and zig-zag stitched them to the top before it was sandwiched. Easy peasy! I finished that step in 2 sewing sessions. Then I added the string they appear to "hang" on, which is just selvedges sewn together end to end to stretch all the way across. I was winging it, can you tell?

After scouring my stash for binding options, I ended up pulling some brown wood grain (Joel Dewberry,) Kei Honeycomb in Red, and some mustard colored DS Quilts (Denyse Schmidt for Joanns) and I do love how the binding looks!

I realize this is not a quilt-show-worthy piece of art, but finishing it has really soothed my quilting itch while our home is in limbo! Plus I've been on a bit of a banner/bunting/flag kick lately, what does that say? (oooh tomorrow I hope to post about a bunting tote bag I just finished too!)

Here's Eli testing out his new quilt... that face is him saying "oof" looking for doggies in the neighbors backyard.

{One final photo of Eli and his Grammy}Thanks to my little sister, Carla, for allowing me to play with her fancy SLR camera - I want one!!! It shoots like butter, er, slices like butter, or shoots like an NBA player? Its a sweet camera, end of story.